Yves Guillemot recently made an appearance in an interview with Variety, in which the Ubisoft CEO spoke about both the ongoing cost-cutting measures and in-development projects at the French gaming giant. When asked about upcoming projects in the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises, Guillemot responded that there are "several" Assassin's Creed titles in development at Ubisoft, and that those titles will involve both single-player and multiplayer gameplay. Similar is true for the Far Cry franchise, in that Ubisoft currently has two Far Cry projects in development, although Guillemot declined to specify any further on what those projects were. One of the upcoming Assassin's Creed projects is almost certainly the much-rumored Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake that is slated to launch sometime in 2026.

This interview and the promises of new Far Cry and Assassin's Creed games comes the same week as Ubisoft confirmed a round of layoffs at its Toronto studio as part of its heavily criticized company-wide restructuring and cost-savings plan that will likely see up to 18% of the company laid off in order to save €200 million in five years. That same plan has seen Ubisoft divide development efforts into five creative houses, each of which will be responsible for a handful of IPs. When asked about this and the necessity for the cost reduction, Yves Guillemot blamed rapid post-COVID growth and flat-lining demand where continued growth had been anticipated. He goes on to say that "our priority today is to build a more focused, agile company, with stronger teams that strike the right balance between senior expertise and young talent and who are well positioned to deliver the highest quality games." If recent game cancellation trends at Ubisoft are anything to go by, nothing is set in stone, and the projects that have been in the pipeline for the longest seem to be the most likely to be cancelled or delayed, as was the case with the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake.

Thermal Grizzly announced its TG Delidded CPUs, which would see the company sell delidded AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs for enthusiast use with direct-die cooling solutions. The program started with the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and has since expanded to include the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, with the latest addition being the recently released AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D. The delidded 9850X3D comes in at $876.33 on the Thermal Grizzly store, which is a marked increase over the $500 MSRP, but it also includes a warranty in the case of any manufacturer defects or issues that might arise during the delidding process. The aforementioned warranty is valid for two years and covers material defects of the CPU and even extends to overclocking within manufacturer spec, as long as adequate cooling is provided. It does not cover any physical or liquid damage to the silicon, SMDs, or the PCB.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D is now live]

Roman Hartung, aka Der8auer, famous overclocker and CEO of Thermal Grizzly, published a YouTube video demonstrating the delidding process and documenting potential performance and thermal improvements as a result of delidding and direct-die cooling. In the video, Hartung tests the 9850X3D in Cinebench R23, demonstrating a 90.2° C peak temperature on one CCD, with the average die temperature getting as high as 88.1° C with a peak power draw of 182.35 W in the 10-minute CPU benchmark run. Individual peak CPU core temperatures ranged from 78 to 88.2° C, whereas after applying liquid metal and a direct-die cooling solution resulted in peak CPU core temperatures of 66.1-75.3° C and a peak average CPU temperature of 75.3°C—temperatures were down around 15° C across the board following the delid. Power draw was slightly lower during this test, at 178.09 W peak package power, although the same settings were applied in BIOS ahead of the tests. Hartung also goes on to test the overclocking capabilities of the delidded CPU on the direct-die cooling solution, which can be seen in the video below.

Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind ailing free-to-play raid shooter, Highguard, has had a rough time since the game's launch and middling reception, with mass layoffs casting doubt on the game's future, despite the studio's assurances that there is content planned for the future. In a recent post to X, Wildlight announced that it will soon be releasing the first content update for the game since the aforementioned layoffs. The update, which is slated to launch the same week as the announcement, will almost certainly include bug fixes and changes to the game, but Wildlight has highlighted two important new pieces of content coming to the game.

The first bit of content is a new base, Cloudreach, which is an airship base with an airship docked high above the ground and the Anchor Stone target inside the airship itself. Players will face off in and around the airship, where gameplay will range from long-ranged sniper engagements to close-quarters combat in tight corridors. The update also introduces the Lockpick, a new Raid tool that fires darts at doors and windows to open them, temporarily disable them, and give control to your team. The Lockpick will use a new ammo type, Darts, and the tool itself can be equipped in the start loadout menu or found in red chests.

Hot on the heels of the MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Lightning Z launch, it seems as though the hardware maker is planning yet another special edition GPU launch. MSI recently teased in a Bilibili post on its official GPU account that it is planning a limited edition launch in collaboration with popular fantasy anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It may also be the case that the GPU is part of a special edition bundle, although there's no evidence to back this up. Given that it is a limited edition, it seems reasonable that the GPU will be an RTX 5090 or 5080.

Not much else is known about the upcoming launch, although speculation suggests that the new GPU will be based on one of the brand's designs with a white shroud and a Frieren-inspired theme, purely because white is a consistent color for the character in the anime. It's also almost guaranteed to be an NVIDIA GPU, since MSI only makes GeForce GPUs. This is hardly the first GPU design or collaboration to lean into non-gaming properties, with the recent ASUS x Hatsune Miku Astral GPU and hardware series being a notable example of one such collaboration. Frieren has also been featured in a Starforge prebuilt PC design, which was also an almost entirely white build.

PMM is a mouse mod maker that provides commercially available custom ultra-light shells for popular gaming mice, like the Razer Viper V3 Pro and the Endgame Gear OP1 8K, often shaving off upwards of 15 g from the stock weight. The latest mouse on the PMM mod radar is the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike, which weighs in at a hearty 60 g in stock form. The custom shell designer revealed in a post on X that an ultra-light G Pro X2 Superstrike shell is in development, asking for community feedback on a target weight and design in the process.

Throughout the thread, there are implications that the mouse modder may be able to get the mouse weight as low as 35 g, with PMM going so far as to comment that 39 g may even be possible with a solid shell with no weight-reduction holes. Replies to comments also indicate that a final weight as low as 29 g—over 50% reduction from stock—may be possible, if somewhat challenging, while 33 g would be "ambitious" while also retaining the battery. PMM also suggests that a mod kit with a different battery position could solve the forward weight bias that some users have complained about. It will likely be a while before PMM actually launches a mod kit for the Superstrike, since the design process involves 3D scanning an existing mouse and then optimizing the design from there.

Slay the Spire is a beloved single-player indie roguelike deck-builder that debuted on Steam in 2019 and has somehow maintained an active community of over 24,000 concurrent daily players, even seven years after its initial launch. The game's sequel, Slay the Spire 2 has been hotly anticipated, and, according to an update to the game's Steam Store page, the developer will be adding four-player co-op to the game. The updated Steam Store page also revealed that the game now has a launch date of March 5, 2026 and a new Early Access trailer.

The original game's format and unique hand-crafted world will make a return in the sequel, but the world has evolved for the second installment, offering new monsters, characters, abilities, and secrets to discover. The four-player co-op mode is likely the biggest change to come to the game, though, and according to the description of the multiplayer features, there will be team-specific cards and team synergies to explore and test out. Of course, the classic single-player mode will also be an option for players who prefer to go alone or simply need to play at their own pace. The total roster of playable characters will also grow to five, offering players some added flexibility in how to approach the gameplay. Slay the Spire 2 will be launching in Steam Early Access initially, so expect the game to change as community feedback is submitted.

It's no secret that GPU prices have skyrocketed lately as a result of increased AI data center demand. This has been especially true for any GPU featuring more than 8 GB of VRAM, like AMD's Radeon RX 9060 and 9070 series. However, while AMD GPUs were previously seen as a viable alternative when NVIDIA GPUs were unaffordable or unavailable, that increased demand resulted in price spikes of up to 40% by December 2025. This is based on Japanese data collected by Gaz:Log, who also found that, since that massive price hike, reduced demand has forced retailers to drop prices for both the RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 XT 16 GB GPUs by as much as 15% and 20% respectively.

Obviously, this is just one market, and it can't be guaranteed that events will play out similarly in other regions, but it is an indication that hardware pricing may be reaching a tipping point, after which we may see prices stabilize or fall slightly in response to reduced demand. It's also worth noting that AMD and NVIDIA have both been rumored to be planning to effectively increase MSRP in early 2026, which would result in price increases of at least 10% across the board. This is on top of a late 2025 price increase of $20-40 on both 8 and 16 GB GPUs.

In late 2025, screenshots surfaced of a cancelled multiplayer, live-service God of War game that had been in development at Bluepoint Games, the studio responsible for a number of high-profile remakes, like Demon Souls and Shadow of the Colossus. It seems as though that game's cancellation may have been a sign of the times for the Sony-owned studio, as the gaming giant recently confirmed that it has closed Bluepoint Games. According to Bloomberg, this studio's closure will affect 70 employees, who will be laid off at the time of the studio's closure in March 2026. This news comes amid a slew of closures and layoffs, including 40 workers at Ubisoft Toronto losing their jobs to cost-cutting measures and NetEase closing an entire studio before it had even released or announced a game. Game Developer reports that Sony confirmed the studio's closure and issued a statement explaining that the decision to close the studio was made following a business review.

"Bluepoint Games is an incredibly talented team and their technical expertise has delivered exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community. We thank them for their passion, creativity and craftsmanship." -Sony via Game Developer.

The melting and burning 12V-2×6 connectors on high-end NVIDIA—and some AMD—GPUs is well documented at this point, and although there is mounting evidence to support the fact that the new connector standard itself is partially to blame, there is still the idea that high power draw is to blame for these meltdowns. This is not necessarily the case, according to one user of the Mobile01 forum. According to the forum post about the incident, the top row of pins in a Gigabyte Aorus Master Ice RTX 5090's GPU power connector has melted down, despite the user having implemented a steep undervolt and power limit.

When installed, the user had limited GPU power to 500 W and dropped the voltage limit down to 0.9 v—that's a reduction of 100 W and 0.205 v compared to stock settings. It's worth noting that the GPU in question was connected to the PSU using a 16-pin adaptor, and the connector melted at the GPU side, not the PSU side, and the first indication of the meltdown was frequent crashing during gaming sessions. Both connector ends at the GPU side seem to be affected, but it's entirely possible that the GPU would have suffered even more damage had the power limit been higher. Currently, independent research seems to indicate that the 12V-2×6 cable itself seems to suffer from an unstable or inadequate connection, which increases the current and temperature across individual pins. Unofficial adaptors also seem to exaggerate these contact issues.

Following the recent announcement of a grand restructuring plan, Ubisoft has confirmed that 40 employees have been laid off at its Toronto studio, according to a statement made to MobileSyrup. This most recent round of layoffs is part of the aforementioned restructuring and cost-savings plan that could eventually see up to 18% of Ubisoft's staff laid-off. Prior to the layoffs, Ubisoft Toronto was said to have roughly 500 staff, so the layoffs make up just shy of 10% of the studio.

Despite the recent game cancellations that came as a result of the restructuring—cancellations that included a hotly anticipated Price of Persia remake—Ubisoft Toronto clarified in the statement that the in-progress Splinter Cell remake was still being worked on. This is in addition to the development assistance that Ubisoft Toronto will continue to provide on other projects, like Rainbow Six Siege. Workers' unions across Canada and France have already spoken out about the sweeping changes recently announced by the gaming giant, going so far as to strike for three days in mid-February.

The Razer Viper V4 Pro has already shown up in previous rumors, with what is thought to be a camouflaged version of the mouse showing up at a Valorant tournament. Now, the successor to the Viper V3 Pro has once again been confirmed, this time by Valorant pro, Canezerra, in a livestream (via BestGamers on X). Allegedly, the Viper V4 Pro is also being used by two other Valorant players. Prosettings.net also lists League of Legends pro, Myrwn, as using the Viper V4 Pro.

The current consensus is that the Viper V4 Pro will use the same or similar internals to the DeathAdder V4 Pro, but with the symmetrical shape of the Viper V3 Pro. This means it will likely feature the new dome receiver of the DeathAdder V4 Pro with a Nordic 54 series MCU, Gen-4 Razer Optical Mouse switches, a Razer Focus Pro 45K Gen 2 sensor, a slight decrease in weight, and minor physical changes, like a new coating and slight shape tweaks. The current-gen Razer Viper V3 Pro was released in April 2024, while the DeathAdder V4 Pro was launched in July 2025; by that logic, we can expect the Viper V4 Pro to launch sometime in Q2 2026 or shortly after.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro is now live]

Spliced was started in 2023 as a remote-first AAA game studio that would avoid the burn-out and crunch associated with the gaming industry with flexible hours and by emphasizing work-life balance, the quality of output, and realistic project scope. Now, it seems as though NetEase has initiated redundancy proceedings at Spliced Inc, resulting in imminent layoffs at its UK branch—it's unclear if its US and Canadian branches will be affected as well. This is only the latest in a recent spate of layoffs and studio closures at NetEase and in the gaming industry at large, with Avalanche Studios recently closing down branches, Ubisoft announcing cost-savings that would see layoffs take place, and Wildlight, the developer behind Highguard, laying off swathes of developers. The Spliced Inc layoffs come just eight months after the studio started hiring for three new roles.

The news of Spliced layoffs come by way of recent LinkedIn posts by some employees, who say that "an ongoing redundancy process" is putting their positions at risk. While NetEase and Spliced have yet to make an actual announcement to the effect, three employees have posted about the incoming layoffs—Matt Johnson, a lead animator, Sergii Zlobin, senior 3D environment artist, and Kenji Shimomura, another senior environment artist who confirms that he has already been affected by the layoffs. The seniority of these positions suggests that at least one project that the studio was working on will be cancelled, although no projects have yet been announced. According to Shimomura's post, it seems as though Spliced may not be around much longer to complete those projects: "It's wild that a AAA Studio has died without showing anything."

ASUS is no stranger to gaming keyboards, but its previous mechanical and Hall effect efforts have been mostly focussed on the gaming realm. With the launch of the ProArt KD300, ASUS seems to be targeting the creator and office worker demographic that has previously been occupied by brands like Keychron, NuPhy, and Lofree. Despite this new target market, the ProArt KD300 seems to share the same basic hardware as the ASUS ROG Falchion RX gaming keyboard. The ProArt KD300 is a 65% keyboard, meaning there is a dedicated arrow cluster and a navigation column on the far right edge, but the F row is hidden in a secondary layer under the num row. It borrows the Falchion RX's touch panel and custom ASUS Red (linear) Optical switches, meaning there are no alternative keycap options. The switches have a middle-of-the road actuation force of 40-55 gf, and the keyboard is only available with linear Red switches.

The touch panel on the ProArt KD300 is moved to the rear of the keyboard, instead of the top panel, leaving the keyboard with a clean matte charcoal aesthetic—which ASUS calls Black Aerolite. The touch panel can be configured along with the rest of the keyboard's mapping in the Gear Link web app, and it supports gestures, media, brightness, and volume controls, and execution of features like mouse scrolling and clicking. The ProArt KD300 can connect both via a USB Type-C port or via Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz wireless, and those wireless connectivity modes are supported by a 4,000 mAh battery that ASUS says will last up to 16 months with the backlighting off in 2.4 GHz mode. The keyboard polls at 1,000 Hz in both 2.4 GHz and wired mode, with Bluetooth dropping the polling rate down to 133 Hz. There are also convenience features, like an OS selection switch to toggle Windows or macOS modes as well as a three-way toggle switch for Bluetooth, wired, and 2.4 GHz connection modes. It appears as though the case is injection-molded plastic, and the keyboard uses a tray mount, an aluminium plate, and a floating keycap design—the benefit of a plastic case is that ASUS could include built-in dongle storage and flip-out feet for additional 4.5° and 8° typing angles. The ProArt KD300 is not yet available globally, but it has launched in China with a retail price of RMB 999 ($145 converted), so international pricing will likely be close to that of its ASUS ROG Falchion RX sibling, which retails for $199.99 but is routinely available for $139.99 on Amazon.

Rémi Verschelde, maintainer of the open-source Godot game engine project, has recently taken to Bluesky to express his frustrations at the added burden placed on open-source project maintainers and developers by the increasingly common practice of submitting PRs with completely or at least mostly AI-generated code. The gist of his issue with this code is that it often contains errors and oversights that result in maintainers wasting time not only reviewing sloppy code but also discussing the code with the developers responsible for the contributions. In the post, the developer notes that in many cases where code is obviously written entirely by AI, the proposed changes "make no sense," and goes on to question whether the code was tested, if the contributor made up test results, or even whether they understood the changes they were proposing.

In addition to questionable code, the explanations for the contributions are also excessively verbose and difficult to understand, further adding to the workload for maintainers. This isn't the first time we've heard directly from developers that AI tools have been more of a hindrance to productivity than anything else. Shortly after EA announced its AI pivot, workers at the gaming giant claimed that the AI tools that had been pushed by management for a year at that point were costing developers time instead of increasing productivity. There have been similar discussions in the Blender development forum, where one user proposed implementing an AI contributions policy that would only allow AI-generated code in a limited capacity, only when disclosed, in cases where the developer takes full accountability for their submission, and when they understand the utility and functionality of the code.

Rocket League, the popular competitive vehicular soccer game, will soon be getting an anti-cheat implementation, nearly a decade after its original launch. Psyonix announced on the game's official X account that it would be implementing Easy Anti-Cheat in Rocket League in an April update. The justifications for anti-cheat is to prevent DDoS attacks, improve bot detection, and more effectively ban cheaters in games. The announcement comes with a few caveats, though—specifically relating to how the addition of anti-cheat will affect competitive gameplay, offline LAN multiplayer, and gaming on Linux.

Unlike many high-profile EAC implementations, Rocket League will maintain compatibility with the Valve Steam Deck, and by extension other Linux gaming PCs and the upcoming Steam Machine via the Proton compatibility layer. Players will be able to disable EAC for offline play, in cases like local LAN multiplayer, or split-screen multiplayer. Additionally, the EAC implementation will eventually allow players in custom tournaments to run tournament-specific mods, and players will be able to run custom community content with EAC enabled at launch. The announcement also mentions "custom mod-inspired content" coming to Rocket League in the same April update.

Highguard players recently noticed that the game's official website was offline, leading to widespread speculation that the ailing game was silently shutting down shortly after the studio laid off "most" of its development team. However, according to a response from one of the developers on Discord, the site being down isn't an indication of the future of the game, with the implication being that resources are being redirected towards the game content itself, while the site will be reworked and "simplified" before it is put back online.

"Not sure on the timeframe, but basically needs to be transferred and simplified. Low priority atm (reputational damage already done). Now we just need to focus on delivering updates and content to improve," explains the developer in a response to a question about the site being down, implying that the studio is still investing some resources into keeping the game alive, even if much of game's development team is no longer there. This isn't the first time we're hearing of planned new content, as a former developer at Wildlight revealed that the company had already been working on a lot of new, unreleased content that was to land post-launch.

Pricing for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X has increased dramatically in Japan, according to recent reports by Automaton, likely indicating an imminent price increase for Western markets as well. The price increase sees the listed price jump by 21%, from ¥139,800 to ¥169,000 including tax. The increase only applies to the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X models, which are specced with 24 GB of LPDDR5X memory, as opposed to the regular ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, which uses 16 GB of regular LPDDR5 RAM. This has led to speculation that the reason for the price increase is the ongoing DRAM shortage, which has caused widespread price increases, delays, and general hardware shortages in the ailing PC market.

Hardware price increases often take place in Asia first, and this is hardly the first price increase we've seen occur in recent weeks. Acer Japan also just announced a price increase for both its laptops and desktop PCs in the same week as ASUS's price increase. For now, pricing for the non-Xbox-branded ASUS ROG Ally X remains stable, and pricing for the Xbox Ally X seems to have remained the same in the US on both the ASUS online store and third-party retailers, as well.

It's been widely reported that the next-gen Sony PlayStation 6 is in the works, with AMD once again in charge of the APU that will power gaming experiences, even if rumors suggest that the next-gen console launch may be pushed back as far as 2029. It's also common knowledge by now that RDNA 5 will power the PS6, but a new rumor that originated from prolific leaker, KeplerL2 on the NeoGAF forum, suggest that the architecture in the PS6 will not be the full-fledged RDNA 5.

The leaker does not expand on this further, other than to remind that the PS5 doesn't use the full RDNA 2 architecture either, but consoles have always used custom APUs, so the idea that the PS6 won't use the full RDNA 5 feature stack isn't unreasonable. Some have postulated that one feature that wouldn't make the cut is the NPU, since that may not get used in a modern console. It's also possible that certain productivity features or video encoders, although even a lot of the AI improvements in RDNA 4 have been marketed as gaming upgrades.

Darkhaven, a new multiplayer online ARPG that makes some pretty bold promises, has officially gone live on Kickstarter to raise its $500,000 funding goal, managing to raise $79,906 halfway through the first day of funding. Darkhaven's developer, Moon Beast Productions, explains that the game will have a fully procedurally generated, destructible sandbox world with "Diablo-style progression, skills, and itemization," and free, open exploration with a high degree of mobility in and out of combat. The Kickstarter will run until March 20, 2026, giving the developer a little over a month to garner funding. In addition to the Kickstarter, Moon Beast Productions has published both a development timeline and a pre-alpha demo on Steam.

The pre-alpha demo is touted as the foundation of the game, and it admittedly lacks polish and serves only as a way for players to test out the gameplay mechanics of Darkhaven. Moon Beast claims that the pre-alpha is an "unfiltered version of what we're building, not a watered-down teaser," suggesting players will be able to explore much more of the game world than a traditional demo would allow. The developer has also published a timeline explaining what it had been working on in the time the game has been in development as part of its Darkhaven timeline, in the process revealing that Darkhaven should launch in Steam Early Access close to Q4 2026. The studio also explains that the Kickstarter funding will go towards developing more character classes and skills, adding to the mob roster, building out the game's lore, NPCs, and quests, and adding more biomes and environmental events.

Giants in the gaming industry seem to be increasingly excited about the future of generative AI in gaming. Unity, who has previously toyed with AI for features like facial animations, just announced in a recent earnings call that it will be leaning further into the tech with what it calls "AI-driven authoring," a new tech that it is planning on introducing at the Game Developer Conference in March. Unity says that this new AI solution will allow developers to create entire casual games native to the Unity engine without ever needing to touch code. "At the Game Developer Conference in March, we'll be unveiling a beta of the new upgraded Unity AI, which will enable developers to prompt full casual games into existence with natural language only, native to our platform—so it's simple to move from prototype to finished product," said Unity CEO, Matthew Bromberg. It's telling that the CEO specifies that the model will be able to generate casual games, which are usually less demanding than a full-scale AAA game, for example, but it remains to be seen what level of complexity the AI will be capable of and what sort of human intervention will be required.

He explained that the natural language model will be "powered by our unique understanding of the project context and our runtime," and that this combination will "provide more efficient, more effective results to game developers than general-purpose models alone." Unity uses a mixture of first- and third-party AI models during different steps of the Unity AI pipeline, all of which is detailed in the Unity AI legal guidelines document. This announcement comes shortly after a State of the Game Industry Survey revealed that, while many game industry workers at large studios are using generative AI across multiple disciplines, most of those same workers agree that the widespread use of generative AI is a detriment to the industry. Workers at EA have previously noted that increased use of gen-AI tools has also come at the cost of time and efficiency. Despite this, EA's new owner will continue leaning into an AI pivot in the name of cost savings, which is a pattern we may see become increasingly common as game engines and other development tools continue to integrate AI tools.

The Gnome Project has officially announced the Gnome 50 public beta testing phase and API, feature, and UI freeze ahead of the desktop environment's official launch later this year. The freeze effectively means that the features that are part of the new public beta version will be part of the official release when that lands on March 18, 2026. The Gnome 50 beta brings with it a number of features that should make living with Gnome significantly easier, especially if you have gaming-grade hardware. Gnome 50 public beta can be downloaded as a live image or installed via Flatpak using the 50beta branch from Flathub Beta. The biggest changes coming to Gnome 50 and the public beta include making VRR and fractional scaling non-experimental in Mutter, Gnome's Wayland compositor library, where the aforementioned features were previously experimental and needed to be enabled in the terminal. Gnome 50 will also complete Gnome's transition to a Wayland-only desktop environment, a move that has been in the works since mid-2025—Gnome 49 was shipped with X11 disabled, while Gnome 50 will feature no X11 code.

There are also myriad changes to screencasting—namely HiDPI and monitor mode emulation—and improved support for multi-monitor setups. Many of Gnome's default apps will also move to the 50.beta version, bringing along with them bug fixes and an overall increased level of polish. Nautilus, the default file manager, gets case-insensitive path completion; Gnome's symbolic icons are more crisp; GDM gets bug fixes and initial support for unified authentication; Gnome Control Center gets a text size slider and a few extra options to tweak; the Gnome Shell gets the option for parents to extend screen time limits; Gnome software will also get a progress bar when installing or removing add-ons as well as a few bug fixes and translation updates. The list goes on, but in general, it looks like Gnome 50 is shaping up to deliver a more cohesive desktop experience when it eventually launches in stable form.

Ubisoft recently started a massive overhaul, which would see, among other measures, the company split into five so-called creative houses, each responsible for the funding, creative direction, marketing, and publishing strategies of its own games. While the actual structure and split of each creative house's IPs was previously decided, not much else has been revealed about how the new plan is coming along. Now, however, it has been revealed in recent financial filings that Ubisoft plans to hire external talent to lead some of the creative houses, with the first official hire being Charles Guillemot, the son of Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot. This hire is technically a carryover from before the restructure, but Charles has seemingly been grandfathered in as lead for Creative House 1, which is just Vantage Studios and is in charge of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six—some of Ubisoft's biggest franchises.

According to the financial report, Ubisoft will start implementing its new operating model in April, which is likely when we will hear more about who is running the other creative houses. Additionally, Ubisoft says it has seen "the return of numerous skilled former Ubisoft employees in our studios over the recent years." Ubisoft's recent actions, specifically the cessation of its work from home policy, budget cuts, and recent executive and management priorities, have not been met favorably by Ubisoft employees, with thousands of Ubisoft workers arranging a strike and calling for the resignation of Yves Guillemot and for management to take responsibility for their part in the company's recent performance, which will apparently result in up to 18% of the company's staff being laid off.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, the latest game in the Castlevania series was revealed as a 2026 game release currently in development as a collaborative project between Konami, Evil Empire, and Motion Twin—the latter two being behind The Rogue Prince of Persia and Dead Cells, respectively. Belmont's Curse is a 2D action-adventure game that follows Trevor Belmont's successor through 1499 Paris as she wields the classic holy whip for both combat and traversal through the looming castle and eerie Parisian streets. Based on the Steam Store page, Belmont's Curse will feature fast-paced combat, a variety of weapons and abilities to wield and develop, challenging environmental puzzles, and plenty of enemies to keep things fresh.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse will see the return of a number of classic Castlevania tropes and mechanics, like secret chambers, buried items, and challenging boss battles, but the game also switches things up with colorful twist on the series's gothic art style, seemingly blending some of the Dead Cells aesthetic with that of the famous vampire-killing franchise. Belmont's Curse doesn't have a fixed release date just yet, but it is slated to launch in 2026 for PC via Steam, the PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series consoles via the Microsoft Store.

In a rather unfortunate throwback to the early days of the Hall effect gaming keyboard boom, it seems as though the new Haptic Inductive Trigger System in the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike gaming mouse is resulting in players getting permanently banned from Apex Legends for cheating. This is according to a new post on X by Iaroslav Mamalat, who shared a screenshot of an Apex Legends ban report that claims the player used gameplay enhancements.

An email received by the same player reads: "We observed: Gameplay enhancement. This means using unauthorized methods to enhance in-game performance by removing gameplay constraints or improving in-game abilities (e.g. weapon, movement, or item enhancements)." This potentially refers to the use of rapid trigger technology in the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike, but there are other reports in the replies to the X post that suggest it may simply have been a false ban, since similar has happened to other players who weren't using the new Logitech gaming mouse. Curiously, EA doesn't actually ordinarily ban rapid trigger keyboards in Apex Legends, but it isn't uncommon for game studios to ban SOCD, especially in competitive FPS games. Some theories online suggest that EA's anti-cheat may be using timing as a way to detect macro inputs, and that rapid trigger on the Superstrike may be resulting in click spamming that exceeds that timing threshold, resulting in a ban.

Valve has been on a roll, delivering handy UI changes and tweaks to the Steam experience in the name of a more cohesive user experience. The latest in the series of updates comes by way of a Steam client beta update that allows users to include their system specs when leaving a review. PC specs are already commonly mentioned in reviews where performance or optimization are a chief complaint, but the new Steam UI change would offer a standardized approach to leaving those specifications. Theoretically, it could also allow other Steam users with similar hardware to offer optimization tips in response to reviews with performance complaints, and it may help developers who don't collect user system information to optimize their games when performance problems become obvious.

In addition to the PC specs, the February 12 Steam Beta client update also includes the option to allow Steam to collect anonymized framerate data "without connection to your Steam account," but with hardware information included. Valve says it will use this data to "learn about compatibility and improve Steam," but the feature is still in beta and will focus on devices running SteamOS for the time being. This data could conceivably be used in the development of Proton and to optimize games and hardware for the upcoming Steam Machine and existing Steam Deck machines. Valve will also now allow Steam Deck users to optionally submit a reason for why they disagree with a Deck Verified rating when submitting such feedback.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is an upcoming team fighting game that recently showed up in leaks ahead of its official launch. Most recently, however, Fighting Souls shown up at the Sony State of Play, where Arc System Works, the developer behind the game, announced its official launch date aand revealed some information about the game's narrative, characters, and team dynamics. First off, it has been announced that Marvel Token: Fighting Souls will launch on August 6, 2026 for both PC and PS5, and pre-orders will start on February 19, 2026.

The announcement also came with a team announcement trailer for the Unbreakable X-Men, which is comprised of Storm, Magik, Wolverine, and Danger. In the trailer, we got a small taste of each character's personality and fighting style, with characters like Magik and Wolverine getting up close and personal with a combination of melee and maneuverability, while Storm and Danger lean more into slightly more ranged attacks and abilities. The trailer also showed off a team-based finisher attack, which saw all four characters jump into the fray with a flurry of attacks.

Today's PlayStation State of Play has already seen a handful of exciting announcements, like the release date for Game Freak's upcoming Souls-like RPG, but fans of the God of War franchise are likely having an extra-special day, with two announcements coming out of the event. Firstly, God of War: Sons of Sparta, a 2.5D Metroidvania telling Kratos's origin story, has officially launched and is available for the PlayStation 5. Sons of Sparta follows Kratos during his days training as a warrior at the Agoge with his brother Deimos. Sons of Sparta was written by the same Santa Monica Studio team that was responsible for God of War 2018 and God of War Ragnarök, while the development was handled by Mega Cat Studios, a studio packed with experienced developers who have by now worked on a slew of Metroidvanias. The game promises dynamic combat with the classic Spartan sword and shield as well as a variety of "Gifts of Olympus," to spice things up.